ProTools LE 8.0.5 - unexpected error on creating new Aux/Instrument/Master track

[610FFM]

I installed ProTools LE 8.0.3 (full install) on WinXP Pro and had trouble on creating new Instrument/Aux or Master-Tracks - I always get the message "An unexpected error occurred at 0x03DDCB2D in module: ProTools.dll".

I installed the available update to 8.0.5 - same issue. When I create a new Instrument track I additionally get the message for address 0x0447CD1D (New track command could not be completed).

My WinXP is up-to-date, I followed all the steps on the basic trouble shooting post (turn off clear-type, disable startup-services, and so on) - still the same. I have no other software running or other weird tools installed :P - my WinXP is so to speak "right out of the box with all updates" and so is ProTools LE 8.0.5 - I couldn't find anything about this error in the forums yet so I hope anyone knows what I should do now. I do not posess the "Sandra" analyzing software here some system details:
Board: Tyan S2895
CPUs: 2 x AMD Opteron 248 (2,2GHz)
RAM: 2GB

I use a 10.000rpm WD-Drive as System disk and two 7.200rpm Seagate disks as striped-RAID - works fine with Cubase 5 and good old Logic 5.5, also no trouble in any other audio-application e.g. WaveLab, Ableton Live, FruityLoops or else... only ProTools won't run - what must I do?

Also reinstalled the whole ProTools package and deleted all "traces" of ProTools before (Preferences and stuff like that). I'd really appreciate your help because I now own an MBox2Pro and can not use ProTools at all like this, which is really sad :P

I am a heavy ProTools user since Version 3... had a Digi001 with ProTools 6 - all fine, only ProTools LE 8 never ran on my system. Maybe there's just a little tweak that stops it from running that I forgot. The Tyan S2895 board I am using was recommended by Digidesign back then and I think it still is a good board. Maybe it's the lack of SSE3 with my old Opteron 248s that causes the problem. I want to upgrade my board with newer Opterons anyway in the near future as they've become cheap now. Sorry for the long text but I hope you get the idea of what I'm trying to do - can't get it to run though and I consider myself a very experienced user.

[zedhed]

With this sort of problem it is vital that a full report of your system is included;

Please - Use SiSoftware's Sandra Lite application to generate a full system profile:

www.sisoftware.co.uk

Under SiSoftware Sandra, click on "Download & Buy" to download the free Sandra Lite version or purchase other versions. After installing Sandra, click on the 'Hardware' tab and run the 'Computer Overview', then copy and paste into your post here on the DUC.

[610FFM]

Thanks for the link. Here's the report:


SiSoftware Sandra

Computer
Model : TYAN Computer Corp. S2895
Workgroup : ARBEITSGRUPPE
Host Name : silentgiant
User : GIO

Processor
Model : 2x AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 248
Speed : 2.2GHz
Cores per Processor : 1 Unit(s)
Threads per Core : 1 Unit(s)
Integrated Data Cache : 64kB, Synchronous, Write-Back, 2-way, Exclusive, 64 byte line size
L2 On-board Cache : 1MB, ECC, Synchronous, Write-Back, 16-way, Exclusive, 64 byte line size

Computer
Mainboard : Tyan S2895
BIOS : Phoenix 2004Q3 02/07/2007
Bus(es) : X-Bus PCI PCIe IMB USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
Multi-Processor (MP) Support : 2 Processor(s)
Multi-Processor Advanced PIC (APIC) : Yes
NUMA Support : 2 Node(s)
Total Memory : 2GB ECC DDR Registered

Chipset
Model : AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron HT Hub
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 804MHz (1.6GHz)
Total Memory : 1GB ECC DDR Registered
Channels : 2
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 201MHz (402MHz)

Chipset
Model : AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron HT Hub
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 804MHz (1.6GHz)
Total Memory : 1GB ECC DDR Registered
Channels : 2
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 201MHz (402MHz)

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Kingston 512MB ECC DDR Registered PC1-3200R DDR1-400 (3-3-3-8 2-11-0-0)
Memory Module : Kingston 512MB ECC DDR Registered PC1-3200R DDR1-400 (3-3-3-8 2-11-0-0)
Memory Module : Kingston 512MB ECC DDR Registered PC1-3200R DDR1-400 (3-3-3-8 2-11-0-0)
Memory Module : Kingston 512MB ECC DDR Registered PC1-3200R DDR1-400 (3-3-3-8 2-11-0-0)

Video System
Video Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT (12 PS3.0, 5 VS3.0 562MHz, 256MB DDR3 1.4GHz 128-bit, PCIe 1.00 x16)

Graphics Processor

Storage Devices
WDC WD360ADFD-00NLR1 (37GB, SATA150, 3.5", 10000rpm, 16MB Cache) : 34GB (C:)
NVIDIA STRIPE 465.77G 500.1GB (RAID) : 466GB (E:)
TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M (ATAPI, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache) : N/A (D:)
NER 9I3WTEF8PYB (SCSI, BD-R, HD-DVD-R, DVD+-R-DL, CD-R) : N/A (F:)

Logical Storage Devices
WINXP (C:) : 34GB (NTFS) @ WDC WD360ADFD-00NLR1 (37GB, SATA150, 3.5", 10000rpm, 16MB Cache)
Optical Drive (D:) : N/A @ TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M (ATAPI, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache)
Optical Drive (F:) : N/A @ NER 9I3WTEF8PYB (SCSI, BD-R, HD-DVD-R, DVD+-R-DL, CD-R)
3.5" 1.44MB (A:) : N/A
DATA (E:) : 466GB (NTFS) @ NVIDIA STRIPE 465.77G 500.1GB (RAID)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller 1 : Tyan nForce4 ISA Bridge
LPC Legacy Controller 1 : SMSC LPC47B397-NC
Audio Device : Tyan nForce4 AC'97 Audio Controller
Serial Port(s) : 1
Disk Controller : Tyan nForce4 Parallel ATA Controller
Disk Controller : Tyan nForce4 Serial ATA Controller
Disk Controller : Tyan nForce4 Serial ATA Controller
USB Controller 1 : Tyan nForce4 USB Controller
USB Controller 2 : Tyan nForce4 USB 2.0 Controller
FireWire/1394 Controller 1 : Tyan TSB43AB22 1394a-2000 OHCI PHY/Link-Layer Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller 1 : nVidia MCP2+ SMBus 1
SMBus/i2c Controller 2 : nVidia MCP2+ SMBus 2

Printers and Faxes
Printer : Samsung ML-2510 Series (600x600, USB, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft Office Document Image Writer Driver (200x200)

Network Services
Network Adapter : NVIDIA nForce 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet (Ethernet, 100Mbps)

Power Management
Mains (AC) Line Status : On-Line

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 3)
Platform Compliance : x86

[610FFM]

meanwhile I completely reinstalled ProTools 8.0.5 LE under WinXP Pro 32-Bit after I deleted all unnecessary drivers that were not in use at the time (by generating two new environment variables "devmgr_show_all_unsued..." or the like... think you know what I did since this is a common tweak to remove these 200 drivers from all USB-sticks you ever connected since the installation of your system)...

I found out that there were around 20 unused Digidesign MBox Pro drivers which I certainly removed. So again: after removing all unused drivers I completely removed all traces of ProTools from my disk after uninstalling it and had it set up completely fresh. Also I am running the latest BIOS for the board, didn't read so far about trouble using a TexasInstruments chip for FireWire (which means I could also have been using the generic BIOS for my board and nevertheless shouldn't experience any issues...

but: same issues over and over. That freakin' very same address 0x03ddcb2d in ProTools.dll still is mentioned in the error-message on creating above mentioned new tracks. What the hell is it?

A friend of mine told me it could be the NUMA-architecture of my board that didn't affect ProTools 6/7 so far. NUMA stands for "Non Uniform Memory Access", which means that every CPU on my system (since I have two sockets) will be able to access it's directly accessible memory on ONE way and the memory which is connected to the vice versa other CPU on ANOTHER way. In clear speech this means: everytime a thread of either one CPU is running out of memory (or more memory that is physically installed directly at this very CPU) it will have to access the lacking memory over THE OTHER method to be able to reach it over the other CPU - and THIS might be the failure at 0x03ddcb2d - because THERE IS NO FRONT-SIDE-BUS on my system.

See on the one hand I have 6.4 GB/s per CPU with HyperThreading from AMD Opteron which is great for most 3D-applications which makes this a very good board. But on the other hand the Front-Side-Bus-Architecture of Intel might better come into play here, because then I wouldn't have to worry about NUMA at all.

Well I know this is all a bit difficult to understand since y'all ain't programmers like me and most of y'all might not have the experience with several Intel or AMD architectures. But I am known to all of it: Mac PowerPC/Intel, AMD, Intel, Sun whatever it is: I've seen it, programmed it, used it.

But somebody please tell me: this NUMA issue should really be something that the OS should take care about, shouldn't it? ProTools 6/7 obviously didn't have these issues because they (assumedly) were using the built-in XP memory managers - ok, understood.

Nowadays that everyone is heavily going 64-Bit and is writing their own assembly-style methods to access the memory there's no budget in programming it for Intel and AMD seperately. And THAT exactly is what I am experiencing here - please correct me if i'm wrong.

I was also told that I wouldn't have any of these problems switching to Windows 7 with my AMD system using ProTools 9. But I AM having an MBox 2 Pro, a Windows XP Pro system in 32 bit, although my CPUs are 64 bit, okok. So more and more of my friends keep telling me to switch to Windows 7 and even more people keep telling me to keep my hands off of Mac OS X 10.6, because it doesn't perform so well like I'd like it to be on 64-Bit with various systems.

No question for me is: Front-Side-Bus sucks... I mean nobody really wants to have this. Just let me quote the main-board manual of the Tyan S2895 here :P:
"Three HyperTransportTM links per
CPU, support up to 6.4GB/s data
transfer rate each link"

Guys - this was great until ProTools 8! What happened? Is it possible for me to run ProTools 8 on my system at all? I'd really appreciate a pro's oppinion on this, who has seen it all, programmed it all and really can tell me what to do (otherwise I wouldn't ask here but I could also ask everybody else). I would listen to everything that certain somebody is telling me because I want to get my freakin' system back to run ProTools and I really don't feel like downgrading to PT7 now because they have software-based memory-controller issues... I mean: it ran in PT6/7... what about PT8/9 now? I just want an answer: do I need to downgrade to PT7 because my system just does not support PT8/9? Do I need to buy Win7/64 to get it to run? Do I need to switch to the Intel Xeon platform? Or what? Thanks for reading this and for your time - but please: if you have anything in your mind that could help me - please tell me :P

best regards,
Giovanni from Frankfurt / Germany

[TheMaster'sTable]

Did u get it rectified? Do you have any other DAWs running on ur machine? I too had the very same problem since I installed Cubase 5. Once i uninstalled Cubase 5, its working fine

[albee1952]

RAID is not supported by Pro Tools 8.x. First thing I would do is start over, with a 7200 rpm drive as the system drive, the 10K drive as a recording drive and the 3rd drive as a samples and backup drive.